Downtime
by Ilanala
Summary: Crossover with Stargate: Atlantis Starbuck and Sheppard share a drink in the Bar of Utter Plot Contrivance.


"So, come here often?"

Kara half-turned to the man sitting next to her, eyebrows raised in a 'You've got to be kidding me' expression. "You don't really expect to win me over with that pick-up line, do you?" she asked, hoping he'd take the hint and go away.

"No, not really," he answered, undeterred. "I figured I'd get your attention with that and then win you over with my charm and amazing conversational skills."

"I see." She wasn't particularly impressed with this guy so far. He was decent-looking, despite the efforts of his black hair to point in every direction at once, but nothing amazing. He was wearing what looked like part of a uniform—grey pants and a plain black t-shirt—but not one she recognized. He seemed like a nice enough guy, at least from what she could tell after thirty seconds of conversation, but nice was boring, and she had no patience for it at the moment.

"Obviously that's going well," he noted, taking a sip of his drink (a yellowish, bubbly liquid she thought was called beer). "I guess I'm a little off my game tonight."

"Long day?" Kara didn't even look up from her ambrosia. At least it didn't try to talk to her when she didn't feel like talking; plus, it would hopefully get her drunk enough not to care about random, uninteresting men refusing to leave her alone.

He laughed, that sort of 'Man, my life sucks' laugh people have when there's really nothing funny about their situation. "Try long couple of months."

"You and me both." Kara muttered into her glass, thinking that whatever this guy had been dealing with couldn't be nearly as bad as the Cylons blowing up the Twelve Colonies and continuing to hound the survivors, to say nothing of the non-Cylon-related problems she'd been having lately.

"I travelled halfway across the universe after I'd only just found out that we could leave the solar system," he offered. It almost sounded like a challenge.

"I jumped farther from home than any human has in all our recorded history," she returned.

"Jumped?" he asked, confused.

"FTL jump," she clarified.

"Cool." After a moment of contemplation, he tried again: "Life-sucking aliens?"

That did sound pretty unpleasant, to tell the truth, but so were the Cylons. "Robots that look like humans and want to kill us all."

"Ooh." Kara was looking at him now, and she saw several different expressions pass over his face, none of them happy, as he considered what to say next. "The life-sucking aliens want to find my home planet and eat all the people there," he finally said.

"The robots already destroyed my home planet, and the other eleven too," she said grimly. This really wasn't a very funny game, and she wasn't sure why they were playing it.

The man winced. "Okay, you win." He waved at the bartender for another drink before asking, "If your planet got blown up, why aren't you dead?"

"I wasn't there when it happened," Kara answered, annoyed. This was most definitely not a conversation she felt like having at the moment (or ever, if she could help it). "I was on my ship, and are you going out of your way to make this a depressing night?"

He glanced at her for a moment, and his eyes went dark as he looked away from her angry glare. "Sorry," he said, his voice flat. "That was stupid."

"Yeah," she agreed. She really wished he would just leave, now that he'd made an ass of himself.

"So," he continued (did he not know when to quit?). "Do you have a name?"

"Starbuck," she said shortly.

His brow furrowed in confusion. "What kind of a name is that?"

"It's a call sign. All the pilots have them."

His expression brightened again, to the point where she wondered if she'd imagined that all-too-familiar haunted look in his eyes earlier. "You're a pilot?" he asked. "What do you fly?"

"Vipers," she answered. Did he take her for some wussy Raptor pilot?

"We don't have those," he commented. "Are they any good?"

Despite her desire to cut short the conversation, Starbuck couldn't resist the opportunity to say something about her beloved Vipers. "They're wonderful," she said, as though that was all there was to say on the subject. (It was; how could you explain a Viper to someone who'd never flown one?) "They don't handle quite as well as the Cylon raiders, but they're a lot less slimy."

He smiled an 'I have no idea what you're talking about' smile, not surprisingly given he didn't even know who the Cylons were. "Are you a pilot, too?" she asked. His interest had seemed like more than just an attempt to make conversation. Sure enough, he nodded. "Military?" she inquired.

"U.S. Air Force," he confirmed, although the words meant nothing to her. "But most Air Force pilots haven't gotten to fly anything like what we've got in Atlantis."

There were few things in the world Kara loved enough to talk about with a vaguely irritating stranger regardless of her mood, but flying was one of them. Before she could remind herself that she was trying to get rid of this guy, she asked him to elaborate, and they launched into a comparison of Vipers, Raptors, puddle jumpers and all sorts of other oddly-named flying machines.

Two glasses of ambrosia ("Is that absinthe?" he asked in surprise.) and a bottle and a half of beer later, it occurred to her that she didn't even know his name yet. "John Sheppard," he said. "I don't have a fancy call sign."

By now, she had enough alcohol in her system to smile at that. "Kara," she said.

"What?"

"My name," she clarified.

"Ah. That's much less weird than Starbuck." He drained his current bottle and stood up. "Well, Kara, I hate to cut this short, but I have to get back to work. Good luck with that whole not-dying thing."

"Yeah, you too." He walked out the door, back to whatever corner of the universe he'd come from. Kara finished her drink, and headed back to the Galactica.


End file.
